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HISTORICAL ADDRESS 
Delivered on the Occasion 

OF THE 

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH 
ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE 

TOWN OF MIDDLEBOROUQH 
MASSACHUSETTS 

July 5, 1919 



BY 

ALBERT H. WASHBURN 



■MuWa 






(lb<i''i\^ 



^^ 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS 

Delivered on the Occasion of the Two Hundred and 
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Town of Middle- 
borough, Massachusetts, July 5, 1919, 

By Albert H. Washburn. 



"The Royal Oak it was the Tree, 
That saved his Royal Majestic." 

These lines of the New England Primer, for more 
than a hundred years the approved text book of 
the Pilgrim and Puritan dissenter, were doubtless 
droned on many a leaden school day by our for- 
bears at an age when their meaning was but dimly 
guessed. This and the slightly variant companion 
stanza, 

"The Royal Oak our King did save, 
From fatal stroke of Rebel Slave," 

which is to be found in the "Child's Guide," an- 
other nightmare of only lesser fame, suggests the 
early Colonial idea of the beginner's lesson in 
patriotism. Whether poetry such as this, as stiff 
and wooden as the oak covers which held it to- 
gether, produced quite the effect its authors in- 
tended or whether it stired in youthful breasts a 
reactionary spirit of rebellion and of secret sym- 
pathy for the rebel, we may not certainly know. 
The allusion was, of course, to the Second 
Charles. For a time, Cromwell, that "stern enemy 
of kings," hunted him hard, but presently the 
Commonwealth crumbled and the House of Stuart 
was restored. The "Merrie Monarch" had been 
nine years on his throne when the town of Middle- 



borough was incorporated. The date was June 1, 
1669, and the place a term of the superior court 
holden at Plymouth. In the proceedings of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society for 1873 will be 
found an article on "The Origin of the Names of 
Towns in Massachusetts," wherein the opinion is 
expressed that, while there is a Middleborough in 
the North Riding of York, England, the name of 
our town, like that of Marshfield and Freetown, 
probably originated here and can be traced to local 
causes. 

Some of our earlier local annalists appear to 
have thought that Edward Winslow, afterwards 
governor of Plymouth, and Stephen Hopkins, his 
companion of the Mayflower, were the first white 
men to set foot on this fertile soil, long regarded 
by the aborigine of this section as the fairest spot 
of his inheritance. Governor Bradford's embassy 
to the good king Massasoit, was one of his first 
public acts upon succeeding Carver, and in dis- 
patching it he was careful to explain that he was 
not taking counsel of his fears, but rather of his 
desire to live "peaceably with all men, especially 
with our nearest neighbors." The account of the 
mission which has come down to us is undoubtedly 
the work of Winslow. The governor's present to 
his Indian ally was a laced "horseman's coat of 
red cotton." The ancient custom of propitiating 
royalty and near royalty with gifts is not, if we 
may judge from recent history, altogether extinct. 
Winslow and Hopkins with Squanto, the friend 
and interpreter of the Pilgrims, left Plymouth at 
nine o'clock one July morning in 1621. According 
to the old chronicle, they reached here "about 
three o'clock in the afternoon, the inhabitants en- 
tertaining us with joy in the best manner they 
could." There was a banquet of Indian corn, the 
spawn of shad and roasted acorns. This was the 



last word in Indian delicacies. Before they moved 
on to the fishing weir near Titicut, where they 
camped for the night, there was, by special request, 
an exliibition of marksmanship in a nearby crow- 
infested cornfield. This feat was greatly admired 
by the Indians and probably was not without its 
psychological effect. On the return trip a few days 
later, a brief stop was again made at Nemasket, 
the messengers being as Winslow explains "wet 
and weary." But the mean thing was that success 
had crowned their efforts. Massasoit had made 
them welcome and had given pledges that he 
would continue the existing alliance. The incident 
seems commonplace enough at this distance, but 
it none the less has a permanent place in colonial 
histoiy. No mission ever affected more profoundly 
the destinies of a struggling new world settlement. 
Thus we see the first feeble beginnings of a league 
of nations upon American soil. 

This is familiar history, but no less familiar is 
the fact that two years before, Thomas Dermer, 
one of John Smith's aides, with the same Squanto 
acting as guide, headed an expedition which ex- 
plored New England, "searching every harbor and 
compassing every capeland." Finally he landed 
in the neighborhood of Plymouth and travelled 
"almost a day's journey westward to a place 
called Nummastaquyt," in other words, Nemasket. 
Here he rescued one of two surviving Frenchmen 
who had been shipwrecked several years before. 
The date of Dermer's letter making mention of 
the Nemasket visit is December 27, 1619. The sub- 
stance of all this will be found in the admirable 
history of the Town by Thomas Weston. 

A few years later. Sir Christopher Gardiner 
spent some time in this neighborhood. The Jour- 
nal of Governor Winthrop fixes the date in the 



spring of 1631. Sir Christopher seems to be en- 
titled to the doubtful distinction of being our first 
bad man. Rumor had it that he was a bigamist, 
a charge which was never proved, but there is 
ample proof that he was a confidential agent of 
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had his eye on the 
commercial possibilities of the fishing and fur in- 
dustries in New England and who was at that 
time involved in a bitter controversy growing out 
of his claim, as Winthrop tells us, "to a great part 
of the Bay of Massachusetts." Gardiner's true 
character is shrouded in mystery. The late Charles 
Francis Adams, Jr., who put to the acid test every 
scrap of available evidence, refers to him as one 
of the puzzles of early New England history and 
says that "while the mystery is now unlikely to be 
ever wholly solved, yet he nevertheless stands out 
in picturesque incongruity against the monoto- 
nous background of colonial life. It is somewhat 
as if one were suddenly to come across the por- 
trait of a cavalier by Van Dyke in the vestibule of 
a New England village church." New England 
novelists and poets have found in him a veritable 
treasure trove. He was the walking villain of the 
now forgotten tale of "Hope Leslie" published by 
Miss Sedgwick in 1827. The historian Motley fea- 
tured him in his story of "Merrymount" published 
in 1849. He figures in Longfellow's "Tales of a 
Wayside Inn." Whitticr mentions him in his "Mar- 
garet Smith's Journal." Whatever the truth about 
this somewhat melodramatic figure, it is plain 
enough that his own actions were largely respon- 
sible for the suspicion with which he was regarded. 
Bradford records the prevailing view that he was 
a fugitive from justice. While he professed great 
piety, as became a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre 
at Jerusalem, and it was understood that he had 
given up all wordly pleasure, disquieting rumors 



of the routine of his daily life reached Boston. 
Governor Winthrop notes in his Journal, May 21, 
1631, that "one Mr. Gardiner, calling himself a 
Knight of the Golden Melice, being accused to 
have two wives in England was sent for; but he 
had intelligence and escaped, and travelled up 
and down among the Indians about a month; but, 
by means of the governor of Plymouth, he was 
taken by the Indians about Nemasket and brought 
to Plymouth." Incidentally, the Indians with a 
certain stoic simplicity asked permission to kill 
him but this primitive suggestion was coldly re- 
ceived by the authorities and a capsized canoe in 
yonder river was directly responsible finally for 
the fugitive's capture. The one time current story 
that he was shipped back to England, after being 
taken to Boston is effectually disproved by Adams, 
and thus this early precedent for the deportation 
of undesirable aliens turns out to be no precedent 
at all. If he was under some restraint during his 
enforced stay in Boston, the evidence is conclusive 
that he freely went his way to Maine in August of 
the same year and that he set sail from Maine 
for Bristol, England, in 1632. Years afterwards, 
on September 9, 1644, Winthrop wrote : "Gardiner 
had no occasion to complain against us, for he was 
kindly used and dismissed in peace professing 
much acknowledgment for the great courtesy he 
found here." Nevertheless he did complain and 
before he drops out of sight forever, he aimed a 
treacherous blow which caused the greatest con- 
sternation in Boston and Plymouth. It took the 
form of a petition accusing the Colony of treason 
and rebellion, which was sent to the king Decem- 
ber 19, 1632. There was a hearing before the 
Privy Council, but ultimately the Massachusetts 
Company was completely exonerated and it was 
said that the King threatened to severely pun- 



6 

ish "all who did abuse his governor and the plan- 
tation." When the news of this vindication 
reached Governor Winthrop in 1633, he sat down 
and wrote a letter to his Plymouth colleague sug- 
gesting "a day of Thanksgiving to our merciful 
God" because of "our deliverance from so des- 
perate a danger," which was "against all men's 
expectations." We may gather from this grateful 
note of relief that the strain had been severe 
indeed. 

In Old Colony affairs we justly accord primacy 
to Plymouth and in doing so, if we give the matter 
any thought at all, we are apt to overlook the 
claims of our own town. And yet when we get the 
true perspective, not by consulting local annals 
alone, but by including also in our vision the 
broader sweep of New England history, the record 
discloses that Middleborough was intimately con- 
cerned, first in the earlier Indian and Colonial wars 
and a century later in the beginnings of the Revo- 
lution itself. The war which goes by the name of 
Philip, which scourged over three hundred miles 
of scattered settlements in Massachusetts, New 
Hampshire and the Province of Maine, in other 
words, practically all of the New England of that 
day — those frontiers of yesterday seemed far 
flung to our ancestors — had its origin right here. 
The discovery of the body of the Indian Sausaman 
under the ice of Assawampsett Lake uncovered a 
plot which had long been hatching. There were 
times when a dead Indian was regarded with com- 
placency by the colonists, but this was not one of 
them. Sausaman was one of Eliot's converts. In his 
"Narrative of the Indian Wars in New England 
from the First Planting Thereof in the Year 1607 to 
the Year 1677," William Hubbard, the Ipswich 
minister, speaks of him as "bred up in a profes- 
sion of Christian religion," and as "a very plans- 



ible Indian." When Hubbard's book was first pub- 
lished by authority of the Governor and Council in 
March, 1677, it was referred to as "being of public 
benefit" and its author was publicly thanked. 
Hubbard's estimate was accepted without chal- 
lenge for nearly two centuries. We find General 
Ebenezer W. Peirce, who gave his name to our 
local G. A. R. post, speaking of Sausaman in his 
History of the Peirce family, as "a traitorous tale- 
bearer, a kind of good lord and good devil sort of 
a fellow." Historians in recent years have, never- 
theless, taken Hubbard severely to task for his 
inaccuracies in general and particularly for his 
disparagement of this Indian preacher. Eliot's 
judgment that he was "a man of right eminent 
parts and wit and that his death was greatly be- 
wailed by the English" has in more recent years 
been pretty generally adopted. At all events, the 
one time secretary and chief counsellor to Philip 
secretly communicated his fears of a coming up- 
rising to the Governor. The identity of the in- 
former was suspected and the sequel was the As- 
sawampsett tragedy. The three murderers, close 
friends of Philip's, were presently all put to death 
after a court trial in Plymouth. This was in June, 
1675. Philip, who judged further concealment of 
no use and who probably apprehended that his 
own head was in danger, was soon on the war path. 
The Minister Hubbard writes: 

"These savages began a war with the first 
English adventurers while they were few in 
number, yea, very few, and strangers in the 
land. This rendered their deliverance an 
event truly great and memorable. They were 
saved indeed as by fire; their loss of men and 
substance, compared with their number and 
ability, was great ,and long severely felt. 
Heavy as the public expenses were to support 
the war, they were but a very inconsiderable 



8 

part of the burdens and charges to which the 
particular towns, families and individuals 
were necessarily subjected, in guards, garri- 
sons and watchings in their own defense. The 
whole country was the seat of war, and every 
man procured his bread in jeopardy of his 
life. Like Nehemiah's builders, each one 
toiled with his weapon in one hand, and his 
instrument of labor in the other, exposed 
every moment to death, from a watchful, un- 
seen foe." 

The storm of savage warfare broke here in all 
its fury. Palfrey in his "History of New England" 
says that parties of Philip's men "fell upon the set- 
tlements of Taunton, Dartmouth and Middlebor- 
ough, burning houses and butchering the in- 
habitants." Doyle, of All Souls College, Ox- 
ford, in his "English Colonies in America," 
makes a similar statement, which be very like- 
ly copied from Palfrey. The garrison house 
or fort, where the citizens and their families 
sought refuge, stood upon the brow of the hill 
some two or three hundred feet from Main 
street as it bends to descend to the Star Mills. 
There is an old tradition that all the houses in the 
town, with the sole exception of the Morton house, 
were burned long before Philip was tracked to his 
lair at Mt. Hope in August, 1676. There is some 
reason to believe that this house, which was still 
standing at the time of the anniversary in 1869, 
was not built until the town was resettled. I am 
aware that the mists of tradition are often dis- 
solved when penetrated by some tiny ray of newly 
discovered evidence, but it is a fact that Increase 
Mather records in his Diary under date of July 12. 
1675, that: "We hear yt the Indians have destroyed 
sevl plantations in Plymo Colony, Middlebury, all 
but one house burnt and at Dartmo all but 8 houses 
and most of the houses in Swansey and yt Nini- 



9 

craft and other Sachems join with Philip. Tis the 
saddest time with New England ytt ever was 
known." This is contemporary testimony, so there 
is at least some foundation, inconclusive though 
it may be, in this instance, for the old tradition. 

Long before the war ended, John Tomson and 
his little band of valiant Indian fighters with their 
families were forced to seek refuge at Plymouth. 
Middleborough as a white man's settlement for a 
time was completely wiped out. At the end of 
June, 1677, the governor called a meeting of the 
inhabitants and proprietors of the town at Ply- 
mouth. It was then and there formally resolved 
that "Whereas by the late rebellion of the natives, 
the inhabitants of Middlebury not only lost their 
habitations with most of their estates and (were) 
forced to withdraw from them, but also their rec- 
ords, whereby great damage is like to ensue il not 
finally prevented," * * * it was therefore de- 
cided "to make such orders and conclusions as may 
hopefully have a tendency to the laying a founda- 
tion of the towne and pious society in that place." 

In the Indian and Colonial wars of the succeed- 
ing century, Middleborough had an active share. 
To each one, she sent her quota. In reality these 
wars were in the main the echo of the Old World 
contlict which intermittently raged for almost a 
hundred years between England and France. 
Middleborough men were present at the siege and 
capture of Louisburg, the Gibraltar of America, 
in 1745. To the Seven Years' War, which ended in 
the overthrow of France in the New World, the 
town contributed a company commanded by Capt. 
Benjamin Pratt. Capt. Abial Peirce was aide-de- 
camp on the staff of General Wolfe and in the 
famous attack on Quebec, where both Wolfe and 
the French general, Montcalme, fell, heard the dy- 
ing words of the English general, ending with the 



10 

exclamation, "Now God be praised, I die happy,*' 
So familiar to those of us who struggled with the 
school readers of a generation and more ago. His 
father-in-law, William Canedy, an influential man 
in that part of the town which is now" Lakeville, 
served with distinction during the Indian wars 
earlier in the century. As a lieutenant in command 
of a small garrison, he defended a beseiged fort in 
the Province of Maine and withstood for many 
days a furious, savage attack until relieved in the 
nick of time by reinforcements. This was in De- 
cember, 1723. A story still survives of Abial's 
brother, Capt. Job Peirce, whose daily custom it 
was to read the Bible to his assembled household. 
One day the old gentleman read from the second 
chapter of the book of Job, which contains this 
verse, "So went Satan forth from the presence of 
of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the 
sole of his foot unto his crown." In the old fash- 
ioned type, s and f were much alike. Capt. Job 
was, at best, a halting reader and "sore boils" be- 
came for him "four balls," so that Satan was made 
to smite Job with four balls. From his son Ebene- 
zer, who for once was paying close heed, came the 
quick and appreciative response: "That was a 
devil of a shot." 

Some of the Arcadian families, immortalized in 
Longfellow's "Evangeline,' 'torn and deported from 
their Nova Scotia homes by order of the English 
Crown, were assigned to this town. The general 
court contributed to their support in accordance 
with vouchers submitted by the selectmen of the 
different towns and the Massachusetts archives 
disclose such vouchers signed by our town fathers. 

The history of Middleborough during this peri- 
od is indeed the common history of the New Eng- 
land frontier village. The inhabitants lived un- 
der the constant dread of Indian massacre and at- 



11 

tack by wild beasts. The dreaded cry "The In- 
dians are here!" was likely to be heard at any 
moment, day or night, and yet there must have 
been compensations. Even in those days each 
settler may well have said,, 

********* the tall rock. 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
Their colors and their forms were yet to me. 
An appetite — a feeling and a love." 

Then, too, game and jBsh were everywhere about. 
Capt. John Smith made two voyages to these shores 
before Plymouth was settled. Listen ye local 
hunters and fishermen, who shall be nameless, ex- 
cept as your exploits are proudly proclaimed in 
the local press, to this report taken from Smith's 
*'Description of New England in the Year of Our 
Lord 1614." The quotation is literal save for the 
quaint spelling which I have modernized. 

"Moose, a beast bigger than a stag, deer, 
red and fallow, beavers, wolves, foxes, both 
black and other; aroughconds, wildcats, bears, 
otters, martins, fitches, musquassus, divers 
sorts of vermine whose names I do not know. 
All these and divers other good things had 
here for want of use, still increased and de- 
creased with little diminution, whereby they 
grow to abundance. You shall scarce find any 
bays, shallow shore or cove or sand where 
you may not find clams, or lobsters or both at 
your pleasure and in many places load your 
boat if you please; nor isles where you find no 
fruit, birds, crabs, and mussels, or all of them 
for taking at low water. And in the harbors 
we frequent, the little boy might take of cun- 
ners and pinnacks and such delicious fish at 
the ship's stern, more than six or ten men 
could eat in a day; but with a casting net 
thousands when we please; and scarce no 
place but cod. cuske, halibut, mackerel or such 
like a man may take with a hook or line what 



12 

he will. And in divers sandy bays, a man may 
draw with a net, great store of mullets, bass, 
and divers other sorts of such excellent fish as 
is needed, can draw on shore; no river where 
there is not plenty of sturgeon or salmon or 
both, all of which are to be had in abundance, 
observing of their seasons. But if a man will 
go at Christmas to gather cherries in Kent, he 
may be deceived; though there may be plenty 
in summer. So here these plenties have each 
their season as I have expressed." 

To what extent hunting was followed as a sport 
for its own sake is not altogether clear. The evi- 
dence is somewhat conflicting. It was provided in 
one of the early orders of the Plymouth plantation, 
"that whosoever shall shoot off a gun at any game 
whatsoever, except at an Indian or a wolf shall 
forfeit five shills," but this order was undoubtedly 
dictated by military necessity and did but antici- 
pate Cromwell's advice to the dissenters of the 
next generation to "put their trust in God and 
keep their powder dry." Then there is Macauley's 
well-known jibe: "The Puritan hated bear-bait- 
ing, not because it gave pain to the bear but be- 
cause it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed 
he generally contrived to enjoy the double pleas- 
ure of tormenting both spectators and bear." But 
it should be remembered that Macauley bore no 
love for the Puritan. It is therefore with some- 
thing like a shock of grateful surprise that we find 
him elsewhere thus alluding to the American wild- 
erness, towards which so many wistfully looked as 
the only asylum where civil and spiritual freedom 
could be enjoyed: "There a few resolute Puritans 
who, in the cause of their religion, feared neither 
the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of uncivil- 
ized life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor 
the tomahawks of more savage men, had built, 
amidst the primeval forests, villages, which are 



13 

now great and opulent cities, but which have, 
through every change, retained some trace of the 
character derived from their founders.*' There is 
perhaps a trace of gentle satire even here, as the 
closing words suggest. But though we do not turn 
to Macauley for a just estimate of the Puritan, we 
may well agree with the New England poet that he 
was 

"A soldier of the Cromwell stamp. 
With sword and hymn book by his side. 
At home alike in church or camp, 
Austere he lived and, smileless, died." 

The approach of the Revolution found this 
town in a turmoil. Judge Peter Oliver was, of 
course, the storm center. This remarkable man 
came here from Boston in 1744 at the age of thirty- 
one. He bought up the Indian village of Muttock, 
coming into possession of much property devas- 
tated during King Philip's War, and went into the 
iron business. We are told that under his com- 
petent direction this industry advanced to high 
rank in the Province. Much of the shot and shell 
and ordnance used in the French and Indian wars 
of the period was here turned out. He was not a 
lawyer, but nevertheless, he was made a judge of 
the superior court in 1756 and in 1772 he became 
chief justice. You will find his name in the manual 
for the general court. There was nothing un- 
precedented in this. It was long the favored policy 

by no means even to this day wholly abandoned 

by England— to select for the colonial judiciary 
laymen whose broad experience gave promise of 
the wise counsellor and such Judge Oliver seems 
to have been. 

About his residence, Oliver Hall, much has been 
written. It is a topic with which many of us are 
familiar. I confess that I used to think the pictura 



14 

somewhat overdrawn, but that was "when I was 
green in judgment." We have the testimony of 
the royalist governor Hutchinson, whose daugliter 
married a son of the chief justice, that Oliver Hall 
was one of the finest and most pretentious resi- 
dences in the Province. Tlie governor was a com- 
petent judge, for his own home, torn down in 1832, 
was the stately "Province House" of Hawthorne's 
Legends. Crowning the summit of Muttock hill 
at the end of some thirty odd miles of wretched 
turn-pike road from Boston stood, then, without 
doubt, one of the few show places of the period. 
Judge Oliver is said to have been no mean archi- 
tect himself. The old court house at Plymouth, 
which stood until 1815 was of his design. The 
fame of Oliver Hall crossed the Atlantic. No 
tour of the Province was thought to be complete 
which overlooked Muttock. It is certain that 
the distinguished men of the period were often 
guests at the Hall. We should expect to find for 
family reasons, the royal governor, Hutchinson, 
much in evidence, as indeed he was. Another 
frequent visitor was James Bowdoin, president of 
the first Constitutional Convention of 1780, and 
afterwards the second governor of the Common- 
wealth under the Constitution. He is said to have 
spent much time at the Hall during the siege of 
Boston, though he was a consistent friend of the 
Revolution. 

Many local families, including the clergy, kept 
slaves in those days. Judge Oliver owned one 
named Cato, who liked to hector the servant girls. 
They bided their time and finally managed to 
smuggle a hornet's nest into his bed. All went 
well until restlessness and a rising temperature 
combined to start something which resembled bed- 
lam. In the picturesque language of old Uncle 
Ephraim Norcutt, a soldier of the Revolution, 



15 

himself long in service at the Hall, Cato "jumped 
right up and down as if his shirt had been afire 
and nobody there to put it out." The Judge 
hurried upstairs, properly scandalized by such a 
rumpus and for a time, practical jokes, some types 
of which seem to persist, while generations come 
and go, ceased to be popular in his household. 

To the old Sproat house, the home of the chief 
justice's son, Benjamin Franklin came as a guest 
in the summer of 1773. Tradition says that he 
stayed three days taking the liveliest interest in 
eveiything about him. He talked with the men at 
the iron works in their recess hours. He attended 
Sunday services at the meeting house at the Green 
and during the intermission the farmers gathered 
about him. He left them his "Poor Richard's Al- 
manac." Everywhere he showed himself during 
that brief stay, he was surrounded by an earnest 
crowd of eager listeners. The plain folk of Middle- 
borough never forgot this man of "uncommon 
common sense" who came to them in his famous 
Continental suit of homespun gray, the same kind 
of garb he had worn at the court in France amidst 
powdered courtiers in velvet and gold lace. For 
more than one generation Franklin was a sort of 
patron saint and his Almanac the farm Bible. In 
his Works is to be found a letter written by Judge 
Oliver on March 31, 1756, to a Connecticut clergy- 
man, wherein he gives an account of a critical ex- 
periment of his in what he calls "preternatural 
philosophy." Two or three persons in Middle- 
borough were reputed to be able to locate metal 
with the aid of a forked twig. The Judge states 
that he was skeptical but that the result exceeded 
the reports. He goes on to say that the 

"person holds the twig by its two branches 
in both hands and grasps them close with the 
upper part erect. If any metal or mine is nigh. 



16 

its fibers, though never so fast held in the hand, 
will twist till it points to the object; and if the 
metal or mine is under it, it will twist to a 
perpendicular situation. I have seen it point 
to a single dollar underground at 60 or 70 feet 
distance and a quantity of silver at a mile dis- 
tance; and what is more remarkable when it 
is in motion to its object, upon the person's 
closing his eyes, it will make a full stop; but 
if the eyes are turned from the twig and open, 
it will continue its motion. It is owing to what 
I call the idiosyncrasy of the person's body 
who holds the twig, for I believe there is not 
one in five hundred in whose hands it will 
move." 

While in England acting as Agent for the Colony 
of Massachusetts, Franklin, in some way never 
quite explained, got hold of certain private letters 
written by Governor Hutchinson and lieutenant- 
governor Andrew Oliver, the chief justice's brother, 
describing colonial conditions from the royalist 
standpoint. John Adams speaks of the "miracle of 
their acquisition" but there isn't a shred of evi- 
dence to support the charge that Franklin him- 
self stooped to any ruse to obtain them, though a 
great calmor was raised against him at the time 
by ministerial partisans in England. It was the 
publication of these letters — some of which were 
not unlikely written in Middleborough, where 
many of Hutchinson's state papers were prepared 
— ^which so kindled the popular indignation. The 
revelation of hated "Tory intrigue" was complete. 

Now it may well be that the Revolution was 
merely the culmination of a long gathering conflict 
between centralizing imperalism and colonial self- 
government, but it is nevertheless true that when 
the storm clouds first began really to threaten, no- 
body dreamed of separation. As one gets into the 
atmosphere of the period, it is plain enough that 
a little obstinacy and much ignorance of the colo- 



17 

nial character alone prevented an understanding. 
As late as September 28, 1774, this town instructed 
Capt. Ebenezer Sproat, its representative, "to ob- 
serve a just allegiance to our sovereign lord the 
King, agreeable to the compact made with our ven- 
erable progenitors" and to exert himself for "the 
recovery of union and affection between Great 
Britain and these Colonies on a constitutional 
basis." In a letter dated the ninth of April, 1774, 
addressed by the Earl of Dartmouth, the secretary 
of state for the colonies, to Governor Hutchinson, 
one of the last to reach him before he sailed away 
from Boston, there appears this statement: "I per- 
ceive with the utmost concern from the state of 
the Province which you have set before me, that 
there is no room to hope for the restoration of 
order and regular government till the sentiments 
of those who see the necessity of a due acknowl- 
edgment of the authority of the supreme power 
of the whole empire and the absurdity of a con- 
trary doctrine, shall become the prevailing and 
ruling principles of the Province." The colonial 
secretary concludes by saying that he does not 
doubt but that after proper evidence of a return 
to a just sense of their duty on the part of the col- 
onists, ''Parliament would be as ready to shew 
them the indulgence of a reconciled and tender 
parent as it is now determined to require the obedi- 
ence it has a right to expect from an obstinate 
and refractory child." 

Tlie immediate cause of Judge Oliver's downfall 
was his acceptance of the king's grant. "He who 
holds the purse strings holds the chief command," 
and it was felt that as long as the assembly paid 
the judges it Vv^ould have them under its thumb. 
In a letter of August 31, 1772, to Sir Francis Ber- 
nard, lieutenant-governor, Oliver wrote: "If the 
report be true that has begun to circulate since 



18 

the arrival of the last ships from London that the 
judges of the superior court are to receive their 
salaries out of revenue duties, the newspapers will 
presently sound a fresh alarm." The house of 
representatives forced the issue, demanding an 
explicit answer from the judges whether they 
would take such salaries as should be granted by 
the general assembly without receiving any salary 
from the king for the same service. The salary 
itself was petty even when measured by colonial 
standards. The pittance doled out to the judges 
did not even equal the stipend paid the assembly 
doorkeeper. We may be sure that Oliver Hall was 
maintained, not on the salary of the judge, but 
out of the private purse of the manufacturer. Gov- 
ernor Hutchinson said of Judge Oliver that "he 
had toiled through life in an honorable profession, 
not to his personal emolument, for he was yearly 
out of pocket by the mean and miserable acknowl- 
edgment he got for his labors." 

The Judge's answer to the general court was 
highly unsatisfactory. Abigail Adams wrote her 
husband, John Adams, from Braintree in 1774, that 
"the chief justice is determined to take a stand 
and that the court shall proceed to business if 
possible.' Many colonial officials were forced to 
go to the Liberty Tree and there take an oath to 
renounce the royal salaries. Adams says that some 
of the judges were men of "resolution, and the 
chief justice in particular had piqued himself so 
much upon it and had so often gloried in it on the 
bench, that I shuddered at the expectation that the 
mob might put on him a coat of tar and feathers, 
if not put him to death." Though at bay, for a 
time the chief justice stood his ground. Then the 
house of representatives impeached him before 
the Council. What actually happened is thus re- 
lated by a historian of the period: 



19 

"It was in vain that the court was opened 
in all the customary forms, that the judges 
declared themselves ready to hear and the 
counsel to speak. When those who had been 
appointed to act as jurymen were summoned 
to qualify in the usual form, not a man could 
be found to consent. Each individual, as his 
name was called, assigned as his reason for 
declining, that the presiding officer, having 
been charged with high crimes and misde- 
meanors in office, by the legislative power of 
the Province, could not be recognized as a suit- 
able person to hold the court, whilst the 
charges remained unacted upon. Such was 
the unanimity of sentiment that even Oliver 
quailed before it and the highest court of the 
Province was, from this moment, efifectually 
closed." 

Not long afterwards, a mounted messenger ar- 
rived in Middleborough bringing the command of 
the House that he should not preside over the 
Court. Then he definitely yielded. For some 
months he was virtually a prisoner in Boston. 
There is a tradition that suddenly appearing at 
the Hall late one night, he went straight to his safe, 
removed his valuables and, taking one last look 
at the place which had so long been his pride, 
vanished on his spent horse never to return. 

When lieutenant-governor Oliver died on March 
3, 1774, the chief justice, resolute as he was, did 
not dare, so Hutchinson records, to attend his 
brother's funeral. John Adams, who in Novem- 
ber, 1771, had spoken of Oliver as "the best bred 
gentleman of all the judges by far," made this 
interesting prediction in the spring of 1774: 
"Peter Oliver will be made lieutenant-governor, 
Hutchinson will go home, and probably be con- 
tinued governor, but reside in England, Peter 
Oliver will reside here and rule the Province. The 
duty on tea will be repealed. Troops may come 



20 

but what becomes of the poor patriots? They 
must starve and mourn as usual. The Hutchin- 
sons and Olivers will rule and overbear all things 
as usual." 

The chief justice's last years were spent in Eng- 
land and we can hardly doubt that they were un- 
happy years. There is rather a pathetic entry in 
his diary under date of June 7, 1776: 

"This morning visited Lord Edgecombe's 
seat. * * * We then descended the walks 
around the seashore, which were varied with 
taste, and yet seemed formed on the plan of 
nature, with seats to rest on, and with hermi- 
tages; promontories on one side, and the sea 
opening through the trees on the other — filled 
the mind with pleasure. But I was in one 
walk deprived of pleasure for a moment, it 
being so like a serpentine walk of mine on the 
banks of the river Nemasket, which so lately 
had been wrenched from me by the Harpy 
claws of Rebellion, that I was snatched from 
where I now was to the loss of where I had 
so late been in the arms of contentment. * * *" 

It is something of a coincidence that Judge 
Oliver was made a Doctor of Civil Law at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford on July 4, 1776, the date the 
colonies took what he regarded as an irrevocable 
plunge towards destruction. 

But it must not be supposed that, because local 
tide was running so strongly, there were not cross 
currents. It was a family quarrel, and, like most 
family quarrels, most bitter. Whig and Tory party 
spirit raged fiercely and split households. Those 
bound by the closest ties of kindred sometimes re- 
fused to exchange visits or even speak to each 
other. It is related of one woman living near 
Court End that she called one day upon her sister, 
who was a staunch royalist, and seeing a pot boil- 
ing over the fire inquired with that curiosity 



21 

which is always pardoned her sex, "Molly, what 
is that you are boiling for dinner?" Snatching 
the lid from the pot, the sister, her countenance 
hot with hatred, answered: "Look, it is the heart 
and pluck. I wish it were Washington's heart 
and pluck." One of the local clergy who had been 
known as a Tory refused with vehemence to read 
an announcement of the death of Washington 
handed to him by his deacon. 

One of our revolutionary celebrities, whose local 
fame long persisted, was Deborah Sampson, who 
enlisted as a soldier in the revolutionary army un- 
der the name of Robert Shurtliff . She bought cloth 
for a soldier suit, concealed it under some brush- 
wood at Barden Hill and worked on it by moon- 
light and on Sundays. Wounded by a musket ball 
in the left breast during her first battle, that night 
by the light of a camp fire she extracted the ball 
herself with a sharp-pointed eating knife. 

On October 27, 1815, Wilkes Wood, afterwards 
judge of probate for this county, delivered a his- 
torical address. Why it was delivered in 1815 and 
not in 1819, upon the occasion of the one hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary, I do not know. There 
may have been some connection with the war of 
1812, then in its last gasps. Very few, if any of 
our men who served in that war saw really active 
service. They were engaged in the main in de- 
fensive work, in protecting shore places like Ply- 
mouth, Wareham, and New Bedford from threat- 
ened attack. Capt. Peter Hoar Peirce commanded 
one of the companies. In the fall of 1815, there 
was a great hurricane which was long remembered. 
Nearly all the families at Court End sought safety 
in the house of Wilkes Wood. It was lower and 
more rambling in structure than most of the others 
in the neighborhood, which were so high that they 
trembled and rocked on their foundations. The 



22 

old meeting house at the Green is said to have suf- 
fered the most. Some of its windows were found 
after the gale hanging on the trees in a swamp far 
to the rear of the church. The church itself, built 
of massive oak timbers, well braced and pinned 
together, did not budge. 

The old first parish is intimately blended with 
the lives of our ancestors and it has had some able 
ministers. Perhaps one of the best known was 
Rev. Peter Thatcher. We know he could preach 
"excellently well," for we have Cotton Mather's 
testimony to that effect. At the old parsonage 
called the "Mansion House," Whitefield was enter- 
tained on his memorable visit to Middleborough in 
November, 1746. People flocked to hear him from 
all parts of the town. They choked the aisles to 
such an extent that it was only by the aid of a 
ladder that the great preacher was able to reach 
the pulpit through a window in the rear. He 
preached with tremendous power and effect from 
the unique text, "I am this day weak, though a 
crowned king," and a later chronicler of this inci- 
dent adds that "he proved himself that day a 
crowned king — a king over the minds of men, 
swaying them as he pleased by the force of his 
irresistible eloquence." 

In those days and for a century afterwards, the 
men of families usually rode to meeting on horse- 
back, the wife riding behind on a pillion. The 
young people walked. "We used to walk," one old 
lady is reported as saying, "all the way from Mor- 
ton town, now Court End, carrying our meeting 
shoes in our hands so as not to soil them. It was 
woods most of the way; where Four Corners now 
is, it was all thick woods. We stopped on the way 
at a house near the meeting house and changed 
our shoes. We did not think it a very long walk 
as it was cool in the woods and very pleasant 



23 

walking in the shade of the trees in the hot summer 
weather." In the cold days of winter, it was quite 
a different story. The church was unhealed and 
the men wrapped themselves in their cloaks and 
overcoats and the women in their shawls and 
muffs. Little charcoal hand stoves kept the feet 
from freezing. There were two services then. 
During the noon intermission everybody flocked 
to the old Sproat tavern, where I often slept as a 
boy — it had become by that time, the property of 
a great-aunt of mine. Here the big open fireplaces 
roared their welcome. It is related that the con- 
versation was oftentimes spirited and highly in- 
structive. We may well credit this, for the master 
mind of these noon-day gatherings was Zachariah 
Eddy, a close associate of Webster and Choate and 
a lawyer of real eminence and distinction in his 
day and generation. 

During the eighteenth century, one of the women 
of the town best known for her strong will and 
great energy of character was Mercy Morton, the 
wife of Ebenezer Morton, third in family descent 
from the Pilgrims of the Mayflower. She seems 
to have been a leader in a religious sect known as 
the "New Lights." Her house was a resort of many 
itinerants who came in droves, there to rest many 
weeks free from care and expense under her hos- 
pitable roof. This sorely taxed the patience of her 
sons grown to be stalwart farmers. They had to 
dig their living out of the rocky hillsides and to 
hew their way through the old forest trees which 
covered the farm. 

"These New Lights," said they, "do not obey 
the scriptures. We read in mother's Bible 
'if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.' 
These New Light preachers do not obey it. 
There is a great deal of eating and no work- 
ing. We wish Governor Bradford were here 



24 

to send them apacking. He said, *We will 
have no drones in this hive.' We wish he 
would rise from his grave and come to Middle- 
borough and give these preaching drones, 
who take all the honey out of the hive and 
bring nothing in, a warning, or that the Lord 
would speak to them from above. Let them go 
to Cape Cod or some other place along the 
shore. All the sinners are not in Middlebor- 
ough, nor are all the saints in Plymouth." 

At this juncture, alarums and stratagems via the 
roof and chimney helped to clear the heavily 
charged devotional atmosphere. In the night- 
watches, one of the preacher guests, whose stay 
had been greatly prolonged, was aroused out of a 
sound sleep by a voice from above saying: '*Arise 
and go to Chatham, that wicked town on Cape Cod, 
and proclaim to the inhabitants thereof all the 
words which I shall there declare unto thee." He 
dressed himself forthwith, saddled his horse and 
was soon on his way to the unregenerate Cape. 

It has often been remarked, and this community 
is no exception in this respect, that there are big 
gaps in many of the old church records. In the 
early years the clergy were the best educated 
people hereabouts. The records kept by them 
were generally superior to those kept by the town 
clerks. The trouble seems to have been that they 
were a little too complete. They contained the re- 
ligious experience of every person who sought ad- 
mission to the church. The sins confessed by man 
or woman were spread out with some detail. A 
candidate for church membership had not only to 
promise to sin no more and to forsake former evil 
practices, but to state explicitly what those evil 
practices had been. The theory has been advanced 
that the minuteness of these records is intimately 
connected with their disappearance. But whether 
lost or destroyed, they contained much informa- 



25 

tion which would now have a distinct historical 
value. 

The Civil War found the town ready. Governor 
Andrew ordered out the local company over night. 
Between darkness and dawn, Capt. Harlow covered 
many miles and visited several towns with the re- 
sult that most of his company reported for duty on 
Boston Common at nine o'clock the next morning. 
Judge Russell stated in 1869 that little Halifax 
(which was in part set off from Middleborough), 
with a population of seven hundred and thirty- 
eight, could point to a total of twenty-two heroic 
dead, a record equalled by no other town in the 
state. In the words of our local history: "Great 
sacrifices were made by the men of Middleborough 
for the defense of the Union and in no instance 
was there ever reported any lack of bravery or 
want of discretion on the part of the officers or 
privates who went out from our town." Some of 
these men are still happily spared to greet their 
worthy successors now returning full of honor 
from the great World War, which has tried the 
nerves and tested the manhood of the present gen- 
eration. 

It was in the shadow of the Civil War that Gov- 
ernor Banks appointed William H. Wood judge 
of probate for this county, a position which he 
long adorned. It seems clear that only indifferent 
health kept him from high political and judicial 
station. It was the decade before the war, too, 
that Peirce Academy reached its period of great- 
est renown under Professor Jenks, who had taken 
charge when its fortunes were at low ebb. Students 
flocked here from both the North and South, 
among them the late chief justice of the Superior 
Court, Albert T. Mason, and Judge Henry K. Braley 
now of our Supreme Judicial Court and our hon- 



26 

ored guest here today. I have often heard Henry 
E. Turner, so long auditor of the Commonwealth, 
who died in office a few years ago, speak in terms 
of great affection of his student days at the 
Academy. 

While preparing this paper, I came upon a most 
interesting account of "Village Life in America,'* 
written by a non-resident American. The current 
comments of the period — it appeared in the Con- 
temporary Review for December, 1880 — show un- 
mistakably that it was very generally assumed 
that Middleborough was the village thus portrayed 
and there is much internal evidence, quite apart 
from the allusion to the Four Coners, which sup- 
ports this view. It is a matter of speculation to be 
sure, but I personally strongly suspect that the 
author was George Washburn Smalley, for many 
years the London correspondent for the New York 
Tribune. His father and mother, the daughter of 
General Abial Washburn, were living here in 1835. 
The writer sympathetically describes the place of 
his birth, which he was once more revisiting after 
having spent half his life in Europe. Smalley 
was born in 1833 and this tallies, but my trouble 
is that he was born in the town of Franklin and 
not in the town of Middleborough. But whether 
Middleborough or Franklin was meant — ^I am sat- 
isfied it was either one or the other, perhaps the 
author had both places in his mind's eye — the 
article contains much that we here can readily 
recognize. The town house is described as a 

"venerable and ugly wooden building, painted 
yellow, and full of narrow, high, straight- 
backed benches. Here the town meetings were 
held and they were the delight of my boy- 
hood. This was the school of government and 
political science. * * * AH the citizens meet 
annually in the town house to discuss the in- 



27 

terests of the town, to decide upon the taxes 
and the expenditures for the year, and to elect 
officers. Here is absolute equality, and in those 
old days I heard debates on political economy 
and questions of government which have in- 
fluenced my life. Long-winded speeches were 
not tolerated, but there was a continuous fire 
of ideas, facts, and fun. The language was 
generally rough and uncouth — the jokes were 
broad and homely, but they came from men 
who knew what they wanted, and understood 
what they were talking about." 

The only other public places in the village after 
the church, school house and town house, were 
the taverns and stores, which were common places 
of resort where men met to discuss the politics of 
the day. The local sage who presided over these 
nightly meetings is described as a lean, lanky, lan- 
tern-jawed old man with a very clear head and a 
wonderful knowledge of human nature. It was a 
striking thing about the village politicians of those 
days that they read few books or papers, but they 
studied men and knew how to influence them. 
The style of living was extremely simple, to be 
sure, but — I am giving approximately the writer's 
words — there were evening parties, dances, tea- 
drinkings, corn-huskings, quilting bees, singing 
schools and spelling matches, where the young 
people did their courting. In the midst of this 
simplicity there was no little culture and refine- 
ment. There were ladies and gentlemen in some 
of those farm houses who would have done honor 
to any society in the world. They knew how to 
cultivate the fields, but they could read Greek and 
Latin and sometimes Hebrew. They knew how to 
make butter and cheese, but they were also famil- 
iar with English literature, with theology and poli- 
tics—in a word with the arts and accomplishments 
of refined society. When Edward Everett de- 



28 

livered his great oration on the Character of Wash- 
ington in the town on March 25, 1858, he had an 
audience, he informs us, which was "large in pro- 
portion to the population." 

But to return to the Contemporary Review ar- 
ticle, after fifty years there is a "large and beauti- 
ful town hall." All the old manufactories had died 
a natural death. The cotton factories were too 
small to compete with those of Lowell and Fall 
River. The furnaces could not compete with those 
of England and Pennsylvania. Wrought nails had 
been superseded by those made by machinery and 
competition had destroyed the manufacture of 
agricultural implements. The valuable water- 
power in the town then worked but a single mill, 
and that for woolen goods. Steam factories had 
been erected in the village for shoes, hats, needles, 
and boxes. Finally, the author closes with this 
tribute to his New England village: 

"While it is by no means perfect, it certainly 
comes nearer to an ideal village than anything 
I have seen in Europe. There is absolute civil 
and religious liberty. Even public opinion is 
not tyrannical there. Individual rights are 
respected, without any infringement upon the 
dignity and supremacy of the law. The peo- 
ple are moral and religious, without being 
uncharitable or fanatical. * * * They are 
intelligent, acquainted with what goes on in 
in the world, believe in progress, and contrib- 
ute freely not only to support their own in- 
stitutions, but for the enlightenment of the 
world. It is not strange that they believe in 
the form of government which secures all this 
to them, nor that they honor their English an- 
cestors, whose wisdom and piety were the 
foundation of New England society." 

Thus was this old town of 1830 and 1880 mir- 
rored for our kin across the seas. 

Upon the occasion of the two hundredth anni- 



29 

versary, Judge Russell called the roll of the first 
settlers and it was still possible for him to say, 
"Those names are still here. They are all around 
me. Many of these men till the same farms that 
their fathers tilled. All of them, as far as I know, 
walk in the same ways that their fathers trod." 
Now, after fifty years, this can no longer be said. 
Truly "the old order changeth, yielding place to 
the new." There is no blinking the fact that family 
names familiar since the "Twenty-six Men's Pur- 
chase" are fading factors in the life of the town. 
Possibly in another century, most of them will have 
finally disappeared. Who can tell? In a lusty 
democracy like ours, perhaps this is inevitable. 
But what of those who are taking their places? 
This is the first generation to show unmistakable 
signs of a definite break with the traditions of the 
past. Speaking in the composite, "What means 
Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?" What answer 
will be made upon the occasion of the three hun- 
dredth anniversary? I would give much to know, 
but most of us will not be here to see — with earthly 
eyes at least. There is a strain of atavism in many 
of us in this hall to-day which makes us hope de- 
voutly that, then as now, it will still be said of 
those progenitors of ours who lived in that far off 
colonial time: 

"Their seed shall remain forever, 
And their glory shall not be blotted out. 
Their bodies are buried in peace; 
But their names live for evermore." 

May I quote once more from that fascinating 
book of Capt. John Smith's: "Who could desire 
more content that hath small means or who only 
has his merit to advance his fortune, than to tread 
and plant that ground he hath purchased at the 
hazard of his life? If he have but a taste of virtue 



30 

and magnanimity, what, to such a man, could be 
more pleasant than building and planting the 
foundations for his posterity, got from the rude 
earth by God's blessing and without prejudice to 
any." 

How this vision of this Old Colony which the 
Virginia planter saw several years before the first 
Plymouth settlement has been realized, you and 
I know full well. 

Considerably more than two centuries later, in 
1835, Dr. Putnam, the beloved pastor of the old first 
parish, who was then preaching as a candidate, 
wrote in one of his letters, "There is a little red 
school house on the Green and the little girls trip 
over the sandy road in their bare feet, but with 
very happy faces. I have just had some very 
sweet smiles from three of them." The boys and 
girls of that relatively recent day even, as well 
as the boys and girls who read out of the New Eng- 
land Primer, are most of them now dust. It ex- 
plains much of our past that, with few exceptions, 
each in turn could truthfully say: 

"I sing New England as she lights her fire. 
In every Prairie's midst and where the bright 
Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern 

night. 
She is still there, the guardian on the tower." 

According as faith is kept with this New Eng- 
land spirit, so is our future to be. 



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